Don't stand still, Walk!

Hello people of the World, to all within the sound of my voice. We've had a solid week in the Krak. Kraków is the kind of place where it's easy to get distracted, so many times I just want to stop what I'm doing to go and see something, get some good food, go for ice cream, sometimes I catch myself just staring at things, there's just so much going on. I set a goal to write in my 'journal' every day, I did it 4 days out of the 7 this week which is an improvement.

I'll start with explaining why I chose to title the email this week 'Don't stand still, Walk!' It's come from a few lessons I've learned as we've been out and about on the streets. Finding activities are a daily thing here, and it tends to be the case unless you have a scheduled meeting with someone. The last few finding activities we've done here, we just tend to stand around and let the people walk by and try and stop them, it's good if you want to try and speak to as many as you can but not always the most effective. Each morning when we leave the house we pray that we may be led to those who have been prepared and those willing to listen to us. The question came to mind..how are we supposed to be led if we're just standing around? we won't be unless you have that much faith that people will come to you, but it doesn't work like that unless you're Elder Huffman of course, who has the most faith of anyone I've ever met. We decided this week to walk around as opposed to standing, and lo and behold we've met some quality people, people who are searching or just so open to talking. A man who wants to believe but doesn't know quite how..he is open to inviting us round to his house to visit him and his wife. A Student who claims to be Atheist but then was so open that the message we shared with him softened his heart just enough that he is willing to meet and talk with us further. It's not much, but I've learned a valuable lesson from this that you can apply even to life itself. Standing still and waiting for things to happen, or for people to come will only get you so far. Moving, pressing forward, searching, showing faith in this life on earth is what will bring you the blessings of God. alright, enough of that let's get on to the real stuff that happened this week.

I SPRAINED MY ANKLE AGAIN! I'm so mad. We were running for the tram on our way to play sports in the park on Saturday, I put my foot in a ditch and it felt as though my foot fell off haha. It hurt so bad and I was jumping around shouting all sorts, people in their cars and on the street were probably finding it quite entertaining. So now I have a fat ankle, I should probably be careful and do stuff to make it heal, do the whole RICE thing, but I'm stupid and went and played footy anyway. so that happened. 

We helped out at the hospice place again, picking up more rocks, they got mad at us because we walked all over the ground where new grass was trying to grow and it was wet too so we kind of made a mess, I feel as though we just make life harder for them when we go there but it's good fun. I've had a lot of funny phone calls with Alvarez this week, most of them end up us just talking about Poznań and Warsaw, can't wait to see him on Wednesday when we have the conference. Had a lady shout 'Ja perfect English' after we invited her to our English class, the typical response here in Poland. 

My farmer tan/missionary tan is doing well. I'll send some pictures to show you how ridiculous I look, especially when I put on a normal t-shirt. Also this week we met a proper cool guy from Austria who we chatted with on a park bench for a good 40 minutes. It felt as though I knew him, the conversation was so easy and spoke about all sorts of things and shared our opinions and beliefs. He's a photographer and we talked a lot about pictures and journals and the importance of keeping a record, so I asked him if he would take some pictures of us so he would have a record and a memory of our meeting. He accepted and so for about 20 minutes we walked around old town in Kraków whilst he looked for spots that would capture a good image, one of the more memorable street contacts I've had. With each person you meet you have to find a common ground, something you can connect on, with the photographer we didn't connect on a spiritual level, our views on God and religion were different, but we connected on the basis that we were both human, people, children of God. Even though he doesn't believe that, at the end of the day, what connects us all together is that we're children of a loving Heavenly Father.

Kraków keeps getting better and better

I say that the Krak keeps getting better and better, mainly because it's hot and the sun is out. It's so easy to have fun here. We've been up to a load of random stuff this week. Here we go.

Monday evening after Pday was over it was our turn to put on an activity for Family Home Evening. I decided that it would be good for those that come to memorise a scripture. The scripture I chose was just your classic 1Nephi 3:7..Wtedy Ja Nefi, Powiedziałem memu Ojcu: Pójdę i Uczynię co Pan nakazał, bo wiem że gdy Pan daje ludziom przykazania, umożliwia im wykonanie tego co nakazuje. I don't know it in English but I have it in Polish. It's a good scripture to have on your mind, knowing that God will always provide for us a way to do something, if we have faith that he will of course. 

Tuesday we had a good district meeting. We had random bursts of laughter throughout, not too sure why, but it happens you know. We were asked to prepare a 5 min part each talking about how we can each become a better and more powerful missionary. I was studying in Nephi about the vision of Lehi about the Tree of Life. In that chapter, we learn a lot about the plan of God and our path to happiness. It's written that Lehi wandered in a dark wilderness for hours until he decided to pray, when he prayed things slowly started to become known unto him and he started to see and understand the mysteries of God. This principle can be applied in our lives too and is what I shared with the Elders during district meeting. If we ever feel as though we're in darkness, we can pray and lightness will fill our lives, that which is good for us is full of light. Prayer is a gift from God that is an invaluabe source of direction and council. We had our English class in the evening. To Elder Hadfield's disgust, I taught them some good 'British' English. They love it but they don't understand a word I'm saying. At one point in the lesson, I said 'neither this nor that', the look on their faces....they asked me to pronounce it properly..which I was..it wasn't until I said it in Polish that they understood.

Wednesday in the morning we did some service. Kind of similar to what we did in Poznan. We went to this old people's home and helped out in the garden. We had to make the land flat and get rid of all the huge stones. We got handed our shovels and rakes and other tools and went to work. The lads that had been hired to do the work on the garden asked me to help them out, they thought I was the only one who understood Polish. There was a fella down a hole who filled up my wheelbarrow with sand and mud and whatever else he dug up, then I just dumped it in random spots all over the garden..just spent a few hours doing that which was hard work, I thought I was fitter than I am!

Thursday we had another English class, the class was so hyped! So we played this game involving questions, and there was a bunch of rules that I won't explain..pretty much everyone wrote 3 questions, 3 random questions which were thrown into a basket and then each person, in turn, would pick a question and depending on what number card you picked from a deck determined what you did with that question. I started out, it so happened that I picked a card that allowed me to make up my own question and ask whoever I wanted..so me being me I asked Elder Hadfield what happened to his field. The last question asked was by a new lad that came to the class, he gets up and says 'ok seen as you started with a pun it's my turn, he singled me out and looked straight at me saying..how much is your ash worth?' the class went wild and I'll give it to him, I've not heard that one 1000 times. I laughed though and shook his hand haha.

On Saturday Maciek, my mate from Warsaw came to Kraków for the weekend and asked if we could meet up. We spent a few hours together which was quality. He's a good lad. 

Sunday I taught the Priesthood lesson at church. It was a good lesson about being converted to the Lord, and the characteristics of these people. I like teaching here, for some reason it feels different than it has in the other cities that I've served in. Hadfield skyped home for Mother's Day so I got to meet his family. It's nice meeting the families of the people you serve around.

That's pretty much what we did this week. I wish you all a solid week, I hope you enjoyed reading this weeks post because it took me ages to type.😉

Do kiedyś

Life is GOOD!

So I guess the big news from the week is that we have an investigator with a baptismal date for the 7th January 😊😊

He's an 18-year-old lad called Bartek.  He used to meet the missionaries about 6 months ago when Elder Dooley was being trained here.  He contacted us and asked us if we could meet again.  He wants to meet so he can work on his English but he has an interest in the church and its teachings.  He wants to find God and 'meet him' as he says.  We've taught him some things and then last lesson we just asked him straight up if he wants to be baptised.  We promised him that he may not understand now why it's important but that we'll teach him and help him understand.  So yeah that's Bartek. We're meeting him again tomorrow.

I had to give another talk at church yesterday and do the translation too.  I was told on Friday that I was speaking but Saturday was busy so I prepared during studies before church.  It was just about personal prayer.  I talked about 3 principles of prayer, making them meaningful, praying for others and I can't remember the last one.  I'm far from fully conversant but I can speak and understand good now - but not in any topic.  We had dinner at the Gladuns house on Friday night, it was good and we spoke about the economy of England and about Trump and all that, I could understand it all you know but it's hard to keep up in words with the conversation.

We went shopping this morning at 6a.m.  There's a huge Tesco not too far from here.  We have exchanges In Warsaw with the AP's tomorrow evening to Thursday.  I've already organised an early morning game of footy on wednesday.  There's going to be 10 of us elders there.  On Thursday we have a big zone conference with Elder Johnson of the area presidency coming to visit.  Then on Friday we have the leadership meeting so I'm not even going to be in Lublin barely this week.

I'm going to get a haircut and maybe buy some new things today.  We're also going to go out for lunch.  Love you all.  I'm doing well.  I'm healthy and I'm enjoying myself.  I'm confident with my Polish now which takes so much pressure off.  Life is GOOD!

Have a good week.

The Cultural Centre in Lublin with the Polish flag.

-2 degrees!

We woke up to snow on Wednesday this week.

Polish Independence Day 11.11.16

Wszystkich Świętych - Lipowa Cmentarz

Are you all ready for this weeks adventures - 

On Monday after emailing we walked around for a bit before meeting Michael in the Old Town, we booked to go and do an escape room. It was called Jail #3, so we were locked in a big jail cell and we had to get out. It stressed me out big time as we couldn't figure out one of the clues. We made it out in time though. We met a bunch of youth from Philadelphia on the Old Town, we just followed the noise as we figured it couldn't have been coming from Polish people. There was about 60 of them. Turns out they were all Jewish and were here in Poland visiting all the Jewish history and things, reminds me of when I was in Kraków 5 years ago on my history school trip. They encircled us and were asking us all sorts of questions.  I had one guy who was a Chelsea fan asking me to report on what I thought of the united defeat to Chelsea..the cheeky beggar haha.

Tuesday (Wszystkich Świętych) was a good day. Started off with a classic district meeting, followed by a long lesson/bible study we had been invited to by the other elders. The purpose being to help this individual gain an understanding of scriptures in the Bible that she struggled to understand properly, also we helped her understand how the church teaches these parts of doctrine. Then came the night time, we headed over to Lipowa Cmentarz with Michael, of course, and just enjoyed the beauty of the flowers and lights. We were there for a while as this Cemetery is huge, and the lights were endless.  

Wednesday was a hit. We had a meeting with a guy called Bartek. Just an 18-year-old lad who wants to learn English. We read through the Przedmowa of the Book of Mormon with him and then he translated it into English. English class was sweet, it was CLASS if I may say so. We had a poetry night. We went and bought a load of candles after studies from Tesco to use. We turned all the lights off, it was dark outside, only the candle-light lit the room and we just let words flow freely onto paper. I was given the topic and had to write a poem about a tree I fell in love with. It was a masterpiece. 

Zone Training happened on Thursday. It was a good time. Although we got there only by a miracle. We got up and prepared ourselves on time, left the house on time, but traffic got in the way and there was no way we were going to make it. We pulled up at the station at 7:53, with just under a minute to go before the train left. My job again was to sprint as fast as I could from the bus and try and hold up the train. I got to the platform but there was no train. The train hadn't arrived yet, it had been delayed a couple of minutes,  i guess our prayers were answered.

Some of the new Elders in my zone - Dickson, Hansen and Barlow

Warsaw Zone

Infamous MTC group

Friday not much happened, we had a meeting get cancelled and just weekly planned and did a bit of contacting. Marlena had us round at her place again for dinner. We were there most of the night and then she drove us home. The food was soooo good! We had Russian style Pierogi to start with and then boiled fish for main. The fish came out whole - head, skin, bones, everything.  It was interesting to look at, but tasted so good! 

On Saturday instead of English we had a late branch halloween party. There was a load of food there, loads of people, it was a good time. We had a few friends come from English. We also had a few investigators there and friends of the church which was good to see. I was the DJ for a bit, I'm sure my choice of music got the party going. 

Sunday was a long day, as most fast sundays are. We planned a missionary coordination meeting at 9am, so we were there but Michael was an hour late, of course we forgave him haha. Decent testimony meeting. The translation went well for Elders Quorom. Then came the long wait for 5pm..the time we'd arranged as a branch to have a 'break the fast' at the Belo's home. We filled our faces with the leftover food from the previous nights party. Spaghetti and red sauce has never tasted so good! 

So that's me for this week. 

Do some good. 

Miracle in Kiekrz.

So the week.

I'll talk about the main points from the week as we had a long one.

There was a day this week when we sat down one evening to plan, we had no idea what to do with our time, so we prayed about whether we should go tracting in a place called Kiekrz.  After the prayer we both felt good and so the following day we tracted up in Kiekrz. The miracle that happened is that the first house we knocked on, we met a guy called Dominik who let us in and we've built a good relationship with him. He was in church on Sunday, we've had a few meetings with him.  He came to English class, and he came to sports on Saturday too.  My testimony of prayer certainly was made stronger after this experience. 

Wednesday we had President and Sister Turek in Poznań as they were visiting all the branches and holding a small fireside, also they wanted to meet members and investigators. We had it as soon as English class finished so a few of the students stayed, also we had a few members there and Dominik was there too. It was a good night, President had me conduct the meeting which was fun, just the introduction and prayers and things, so nothing much. 

Thursday was the day of zone conference, we left early at 9 so that we could be there for the 11am start. We touched down in Bydgoszcz but then realised that we didn't know the way to the chapel - we set off anyway on a hunt for the chapel.  I eventually called someone to help direct us.  It turns out that we didn't end up too far just by wandering around. The zone conference was good. Very different to the way President Edgren would go about it - not saying that either one is better. There was more on our part to search and find and learn for ourselves. President Turek is a very good teacher. Most of it was in Polish.  When the conference finished we realised that we only had 10 mins to get to the train station for our train, so we all grabbed our things and then had Sister Turek drive us to the dworzec, we made it in time. We also had Elder Garrison and Fetzer with us as they had an exchange with Bebel and Somerfeldt. 10 mins into the ride home the train stopped, and we were informed that there had been an accident involving a person and the train and that we would be delayed 3 hours - so that put an end to the nights activities. Most of the time we were delayed we hopped off the train and chilled on tracks chatting and things. We got home just before 9pm, just enough time to order pizza and settle down for the evening. We bought 4 pizzas. 

Friday we didn't really get up to much. There were still 6 of us in Poznań and we attempted to do some finding but it rained all day. It was dry when we left the house and started contacting but after a few minutes it threw it down.  Things leaked through my bag onto my shirt so now I have a multi-coloured shirt. At first, it was fun being out in the rain, I enjoyed it as it had been so hot, after a while we got really cold, short sleeved shirts too. 

Saturday we had a cool sports day activity.  We had a few people come down and we played some American Football, a sport I'm not too familiar with but I still managed to be better than the Americans. The end result came down to my incredible pace and speed - it was fun though. Saturday evening came and I was shattered.  I fell asleep after planning on the couch still in my sports gear!  I woke up at 4am and then got into bed, the shower I had that morning was one of the best I've had. 

The long awaited fast sunday came - we had a more meaningful fast as we fasted together with one of our investigators which was nice. The testimony meeting was another good one. Having to prepare the schedule and make sure the day runs well is probably the biggest pain for me, so when it all goes well I can relax.

We hit Kiekrz another few times this week, nothing more as of yet but we're not giving up, we know seeds have been planted up there. 

Hope you all have a good week.

Bydgoszcz to Poznań, the Squad!

The day when it lobbed it down with rain! Elder Fetzer and I were brave, the others hid under shelter. Probably the smarter idea

We Have To Live What We Teach

Welcome everyone to this weeks events from Poznań. We've had a good week here, as always full of laughs and memorable moments.

Tuesday was a good day..so after our usual district meeting we had lunch and then had a cool opportunity to help a girl called Kasia who just moved from Gdańsk to Poznań. She's in a wheelchair and so needs help moving things around her apartment. Of course, we always love service opportunities. She has a huge Airedale Terrier too and he's so friendly and just wants to play all the time.

On Wednesday all four of us went to Iza's house to share a message with her and also so we could sing her to mum which Iza is very appreciative of. We had Mcdonalds for lunch which is always something to look forward to.  Just had your standard big mac meal. English class was fun, we had the beginner class and decided to do a spelling test with them. The 12 words they had to spell they have to learn and remember for the next class. It's always fun teaching the beginner class, you can have a laugh with them. After the class we went English contacting in town and Małgosia came out with us.  She's a friend/someone we're working with, and it was fun., she went crazy talking to everyone. I met a bloke from north east Yorkshire too which is rare, you meet a lot of Americans but not many English. We had a good chat and he said he knows Oldham well and has been around Saddleworth and all...small world. 

Thursday was an interesting day which started with service at the hospice as usual, although this time we hopped in a van with our pal Włodek and hit the roads. We drove to a place outside Poznań, a nice little village where we met a family who we collected an electric hospital bed off. Then we drove back to Poznań and went to a ladies house where we rearranged some furniture, took her couch down 4 lots of stairs and then brought the electronic bed up the stairs - nightmare it was!  The bed was in pieces too so we had to build it. Beats picking weeds in the garden so I was happy. Thursday night I looked through all my old planners, went on a trip down memory lane. Things I'd forgotten about but then read, shows the importance of writing down the experiences you have. I've experienced a lot in the past 7 months here in Poland.

Friday was a day, we had Elders Liechty and Rowley here in Poznań on exchanges. It makes a difference having 6 Elders here, there's more of a presence and I'm sure it doesn't go unnoticed by the public. I decided to significantly increase my water intake which only has the consequence of being in the bathroom every 10 minutes.  I felt a lot better through the day instead of living off energy drinks.  We spent the evening on the Deptak contacting. We wanted more of a presence there though so I carried a table down there and we brought books and pamphlets and things and had a 'free table' thing going on.  It definitely brought more people to us. Spoke to a nice lad who told me that he really respects the work we do, although he wasn't religious we had a good chat and he told me he just doesn't feel as though he needs a religion or faith in something in his life at the moment, which is a common theme amongst the younger people here I feel. I learnt a good lesson from him though - he told me that he sees all these people around of which maybe 70 percent claim to be Catholic. They teach and talk of principles and doctrine but then don't live what they teach.  

We have to live what we teach!

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day and we played sports in the afternoon for a few hours in the park. The 4 missionaries were there with Markus, his girlfriend Eva and then her two dogs. We played footy and frisbee and then joined some guys who were playing frisbee too and had a game of ultimate with them. Hopefully,  we'll be able to make a weekly thing where we play with them and get more people involved, they seemed game for it.

Sunday was a day of church, studies, eating and planning. Sacrament meeting went well.  I had Bożena, Markus and Elder Alvarez give talks on prayer and then we had a good lesson led by Sergiusz. 

Take care and do good.